EP 011
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Full Transcript
Hi, so happy to have you here! This is where I share my thoughts on how design changed the way I think and do, and why I think design is simply a part of life. My name is Sandy, and I’m A Design Mentor.
When I meet new people in any settings, I’m often asked, so Sandy, what do you do? Depending on the crowd and not wanting to overwhelm people, I would often respond, “oh I work in design.” Some would be satisfied with this vague answer and say oh cool! But some would ask the follow-up question, “oh wow, so what do you design?” I would always reply with, “I design digital products…” This usually trigger two responses. Either curiosity strikes and people ask more to understand what digital products are, or they just nod politely. Although I never mean to do it, but the nodding usually means I unintentionally ended a conversation.
Two decades ago, when I first started in design, I mainly designed marketing materials, like web banners, wallpapers, and promotional pages, but I also designed the UX and UI of websites. The marketing materials are easier to understand as they mainly serve the purpose to promote brands and products, but UX, UI, and websites not so much, remember, this is two decades ago. At the time, my mom wanted to be able to tell people what her daughter does for a living in New York. And, because she used to work in real estate development, so I used a building to explain. “So mom, you know how your architect designs a building? Before anyone can start construction, they need a detailed blueprint, right? That is the User Experience for the website, the functions and the flows. And then you know how they need to decide on the colors, materials, down to the tiles, light switched, and door knobs as well? That’s the User Interface for the website. UX and UI need to mesh well to make the website work.” For the first time, I saw the sparkles of “ohhhhh I see!” in my mom’s eyes.
But then technology kept evolving, I started to design more things, and more complicated things. Because of how much time I spent at work, I hung out with people who work in design most of the time. We were all speaking the same language, and adding new vocabulary from the industry as the technology evolve. I started to forget how to explain what I do in less complicated language, until I started mentoring. I realized all the design terminologies are actually alien language to most people. It’s similar to when I read any book about medicine or law. I always need someone to relay things back to me in “normal” language.
Once I realized this, especially after I saw the puzzling look in my student’s eyes after my very first mentoring session, I knew I had to work on communicating in a more approachable language. Because it was important for people I connected with to be able to see how the concepts relate to their daily lives, to know that design was not scary.
As we enter the age of AI, I think it’s potentially even more important to understand what digital products are.
Let’s maybe step back and start by understanding what a product is.
A product is an item that we interact with that is created by people who want to help us accomplish certain tasks in life.
For example, a bag was created by someone smart to help people carry more things on the go. The Preppy fountain pen was created by Platinum to help people write well without breaking the bank. The AirPods was created by Apple to help people listen to music, take voice memos, and make phone calls wirelessly. These are all products we interact with almost on a daily basis. We form relationships with them.
So then what is a digital product? A digital product is a digital item we interact with that is created by people who want to help us accomplish certain tasks in life. That’s right, a digital product, is JUST LIKE a product, but it’s digital.
For example, a website was created by your favorite brand to help you shop without being in the store. Another website was created by a government agency to provide people with important information without sending paperwork in the mail.
The Uber app was created by Uber to connect people to trustworthy drivers any time of the day. A webapp was created by Descript to help me seamlessly transcribe this recording so I could produce this video with subtitles in no time.
It’s might be difficult to imagine digital products as products, because it’s always behind the screen. It’s not tangible. We can’t really see their shapes and forms. But just like a bag is a product, an app is also a product, we interact with them both.
I thought it might be fun to compare a physical product with a digital product. Now imagine with me. Let’s start with a physical one, a Swiss Army Knife.
The Swiss Army Knife was created for the Swiss soldiers to serve as a portable multi-purpose tool. Now it’s well known globally as one of the best outdoors/traveling pocket tools. When we hold the knife, we feel its shape in our hand. We can unfold any tool and the body will serve as the handle. It can be used as a knife, a screwdriver, a pair of scissors, and many more. This is how we experience and use the product. If we collapse all of the tools, and we look at the Swiss Army knife closely. We can observe its size, shape, color, material, the location and size of its logo. We can measure the width and length of the body, the thickness and length of each tool. This is how we visually see and understand the product.
For the digital product, let’s look at Instagram.
Instagram was created for people to post content and share with the world in an instant. Though originally only allowing photos in a square format, Instagram has evolved into serving up many other types of content. So when we first open Instagram, when we click on the plus sign on the bottom of the screen, we can choose to post a photo, a series of photo, a story, a reel, or go live. If we choose to post a story, we can choose to use a video already stored in our phone’s photo app. We can also capture a video at the moment with a fun filter. We can then post it, share it with friends. Or if we don’t like what we see, we could discard it, or save the draft to work on for later. There are a lot more we can do in the app, and this is a small part of how we experience and use the product. Now if we look at that same plus icon, we observe the size, the shape, and the color of it, how far or close it is to the other buttons. Once we tap on it, and say we choose to post, we can observe the size and color of the next button on the top right, the size color and shape of the other buttons on the screen, the grid on the bottom half of the screen showing the recent photos from my phone. How the word post is highlighted on the bottom of the screen to indicate that is the type of content I would be sharing on Instagram. This is how we can visually see and understand the product.
Isn’t this interesting? How a digital product, just like a physical product, is serving so many different purposes. But also, how we decide to use them and the relationship we have with them are so personal.
I’m curious, what is your favorite physical product? And what is your favorite digital product? How do you use them and why do you love them?
Next time, I will try to demystify the word User.
If you’d like to hear more, please subscribe, and turn on your notifications, I am beyond excited to go on this journey with you.
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